Porto Urban Lab

Porto Urban Lab is organised by the Serralves Foundation, in partnership with Porto Lazer and ADDICT. It embodies a creative challenge for all those who want to experience Porto in an innovative manner, and develop creative ideas in order to intervene in the city, thus helping to generate innovation that may foster more intelligent, sustainable and inclusive development.

This is a pilot urban innovation project, which aims to empower creative people in order to generate solutions, projects and creative and innovative businesses, that are capable of transforming and enhancing the city of Porto and its assets (local population, communities, spaces, equipment, ...), thereby generating economic vitality and cultural dynamism.

Porto Urban Lab will make it possible to explore new visions and perspectives about the urban context, try out and test new creative solutions, generate positive change and add art and creativity to the city. In other words, it will foster Porto’s identity and the creative economy - generating social innovation.

Porto Urban Lab is an intensive creative challenge to experience Porto in an innovative manner and develop creative ideas for intervening in the city.

The objective is to ensure that a diverse set of creative people feel the city in an experiential manner, collecting ideas that will subsequently be developed and prototyped. Participants will have training and / or experience in different fields (architecture, design, photography, the media, audiovisual, tourism, marketing, management, journalism, music, theatre, ...) and will be coached by a group of national and international experts. At the end there will be a public exhibition, including a series of projects with entrepreneurial potential. These projects will be developed, tested and validated and subsequently submitted to a panel of experts, including potential mentors, incubators and financiers, aimed at their future implementation.

The works will be developed in a practical and experiential manner, through "learning by doing", based on methodologies and the tools of Design Thinking, Service Design and Lean Startup. The underlying principle is 'doing not talking', ie: thinking with our hands, explaining, demonstrating and deciding via tests.

The core objectives are as follows:

- Foster creative entrepreneurship in the city of Porto, incorporating greater creativity in the development of solutions that address urban needs and opportunities;

- Contribute to the affirmation of Porto as a creative city, establishing opportunities for meetings between citizens, creators and entrepreneurs;

- Encourage local identity and local cultural values as differentiating assets for the city.

Porto Urban Lab will have its headquarters in the Edifício AXA. Between November 6 and 18, there will be an exhibition of works, ideas, perspectives and prototypes developed by the participants over the course of the Lab.

The programme will be developed over 3 weeks, with different dynamics:

- Urban Creativity Workshop and Public Exhibition: in order to collect ideas and explore opportunities, which will be prototyped and exhibited for validation;

- Entrepreneurial Immersion Workshops and Creative Pitching: the ideas with the greatest sustainability and entrepreneurial potential will be worked upon and developed in a team, and at the end will be presented to a panel of experts via Creative Pitching, aimed at their future implementation.

Porto Urban Lab is aimed at all those who:

- Like to make things happen and explore new opportunities in the city of Porto;

- Want to meet people, share ideas and work together;

- Want to develop new creative and entrepreneurial skills.

- Architecture & Urbanism

- Music

- Design

- Crafts

- Marketing & Communication

- Visual Arts

- ICT

- Performing Arts

- Film, Video and Audiovisual

- Media

- Videogames

- Cultural Tourism

- Photography

- Gastronomy

- Publishing

- Become involved in an innovative and practical experience;

- Network with creative and enterprising people;

- Receive support and coaching from national and international experts in different areas;

- Participate in a group exhibition;

- Test and validate ideas;

- Develop new creative and entrepreneurial skills;

- Make contacts with potential financiers and mentors;

- Create new job opportunities / implementation of projects.

24-26 October 2014

Urban Creativity Workshop

- Creation of Teams

- Urban Safari & Design Jam *

- Selection of Ideas

- Prototyping **

05-07 November 2014

Entrepreneurial Immersion Workshops

- Business Model

- Users / Customers Test

- Intellectual property

- Marketing & Communication

06-18 November 2014

Public exhibition

- Exhibition of collected materials and the prototypes developed

- Community Involvement & Feedback

November 18, 2014

Creative pitching

- Presentation / Pitching of the developed ideas

*

Urban Safari: will be an (unplanned) journey through the City, in which participants will immerse themselves in the urban context of Porto, detecting, experimenting and recording (via photos, videos, recordings, interviews, ...) artifacts, buildings, spaces, people, landscapes, materials, moments, etc., that stand out, or which have an impact on them, or inspire them.

Design Jam: an activity in which participants, using the proposed approaches and design tools, learn and collaborate in the creation of solutions and experiences in response to the challenges posed to them.

**

Prototyping: an activity in which participants will develop very simple and preliminary versions of their idea / product / service / solution, that will enable them to explore its main features / components / operation and reveal its underlying goal, before investing time and money in its development. A prototype can be anything - ranging from paper drawings, constructions, computer applications, etc.

November 06-18 2014

Public exhibition of the creative projects of Porto Urban Lab

A public exhibition in which the prototypes that have been developed, tested and validated will be exhibited.